The present invention pertains to an improved football practicing target which permits a kicker to practice place kicking without the assistance of a companion player who can receive and return the kicked balls promptly to the practice kicker, while at the same time gives the practice kicker an opportunity to practice place kicks of varying distances and improve his kicking accuracy.
Modern football is a game of specialists who can perform a specific task well. One such specialist is a place-kicker who is required to kick a football, held on a playing surface by another player, various distances at varying trajectories with a great degree of accuracy. To acquire these skills, a place-kicker puts in many long hours of practice perfecting his skills in kicking a football at different distances. On many of these practice sessions the kicker is unable to find a companion player to receive and return the kicked balls; therefore, he must use a number of footballs and retrieve them himself or use one of the presently available football practice targets. While a number of football practice targets are available, such, for the most part, are limited in their use. Some recently proposed practice targets include net structures which absorb the force of the kicked ball, while others simulate the goalpost and thereby afford and opportunity to practice place-kicking accuracy. However, these devices require the practice kicker to move farther from the target to simulate longer distances and, as such, a missed attempt may carry beyond the target requiring the kicker to stop practice to retrieve the loose balls.
Representative of the available practice target devices are those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,472,511; 3,675,922; 3,820,787; and 3,856,301. These prior art devices are suitable for limited place-kicking situations; however, they are not designed for a full range of actual football situations with which a place-kicker is presented in a game. With a greater importance on field goals and extra points in the game of football, greater emphasis is placed on a kicker being able to go into the game and accurately kick a football through the goalpost uprights from any distance. The further the kicker is from the goalpost the smaller the target becomes; therefore, he must be able to concentrate on practicing accuracy by kicking as many as possible kicks at different distances without worrying about running down loose balls.
Prior art U.S. Pat. No. 3,820,787 is directed to a football kicking device embodying a target formed by a rectangular frame simulating the cross bar and vertical posts of a goalpost, on which frame is mounted a flexible bag having its mouth connected to the frame, and of a length to loosely depend from the frame and operative to receive and retain a football which is kicked into it. The horizontal bar of the frame is vertically adjustable in accordance with the distance of the simulated kick. In addition, the distance between the upright arms of the frame is adjustable so as to vary the width of the target in dependence upon the distance of the simulated kick. However, any kick wide of the target will not be caught by the net and will have to be retrieved by the kicker.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,856,301 shows a portable frame and net for catching a football during practice kicking, the net being normally slack so as to move rearwardly and upwardly when a football is kicked into it.
In U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,472,511 and 3,675,922 devices for practicing field goal kicking are disclosed which include portable goal marks which rest on the ground and are adjustable to provide the proper target for kicks of varying distances.